My Baten Kaitos Interquel

Author’s note: This page is loaded with spoilers, especially of Baten Kaitos Origins but also of Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. If you haven’t played these games yet and you think you might, be warned. If you have played them, this will make the most sense to you, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

September 25, 2016 marks the ten-year anniversary of the North American release of Baten Kaitos Origins, one of the last great GameCube games. I’ve been thinking about the Baten Kaitos duology a fair bit this year; not long ago I recounted my 2015 playthrough of the two games, a playthrough carried out in chronological order rather than release order, since the second game in the series– Baten Kaitos Origins– is a prequel to the first game, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean.

One of the big rubs of the prequel, Origins, is that raises as many new questions as it answers. When I first finished Origins over a decade ago, I found multiple message board threads (many of them now lost) of fans trying to make sense of what Origins made for its chronological successor, Eternal Wings. This bothered me enough that, way back in 2007, I actually sketched out an outline of a possible interquel that would try to close some of those holes. It has sat, gathering dust, in a folder ever since, migrating from computer to computer in a long, solitary journey.

As a full novel of fanfiction it will almost certainly never happen, for a multitude of reasons I won’t delineate here. But since I did do the legwork on the plot, I thought it might be worthwhile to sketch the outline of that plot here, for posterity if nothing else. Like any fanfiction, it is merely speculative, although it does seek to clean up some loose ends.

The main issues I tackled:

1. What becomes of Sagi and Milly after Origins? Sagi and Milly are two of the three main playable characters in Origins. Sagi, the primary protagonist, is a “maladieter,” a person implanted with a piece of a dark god named Malpercio, which he manages to reconcile with and draw power from during the game. (The player plays as that god-piece; for clarity here I use its historical name, Marno.) Milly is Sagi’s friend and, as Origins implies, future wife. Sagi and Milly help bring down the Alfard Empire in Origins. Between Origins and Eternal Wings, it is strongly implied that Sagi and Milly have a child named Melodia but the two parents later perish because of some sort of illness or

2. What becomes of Guillo after Origins? Guillo, a puppet (sort of a magical robot), is the third of the three Origins Guillo loses his body at the end of Origins but the end credits imply that Guillo’s head still lives.

3. What becomes of Hasseleh? Hasseleh is the floating continent Sagi was born in. It floats because power from an ancient war seeped into the ground there. (Most other continents float because of the power of objects known as End Magnus.) There is no record of Hasseleh in Eternal Wings.

4. What are the Origins of Wiseman? Wiseman was the main antagonist in Origins; he’s fought twice, once in the past and once in the present. His nature and Origins are not explained and he is not present in Eternal Wings.

5. What happens to Lolo after Origins? Lolo, a brilliant wood engineer, was an NPC in Origins. She is nowhere to be found in Eternal Wings.

6. What happens to the Alfard Empire after Origins? In Origins, Alfard is decimated when the newly-crowned emperor, Balheit, tries to create a floating mechanical continent called Tarazed. Sagi manages to disable Terazed, which subsequently plummets out of the sky and (likely) kills a large number of the population who had moved there. At the end of Origins, a man named Geldoblame assumes the throne to rebuild the empire as well as search for the power of the mythical End Magnus, the large stored remnants of the ancient god Malpercio.

Plot Summary: Baten Kaitos: The Fall of the Heir and the Return of Darkness

Prologue – Alfard: Eleven years after Origins, Emperor Geldoblame of the Alfard Empire is celebrating the completion of his new, grand palace. After a decade of turmoil, he has finally succeeded in rebuilding his empire and has begun searching for the powerful End Magnus. So far they have found nothing, not even in his home island of Alfard. The empire’s scholars believe that the End Magnus can only be found with a special stone, but they do not know where it is. Geldoblame’s agents have been searching the continents, but to no avail.

Geldoblame is approached by a mysterious assassin who has just returned from the island of Mira in a scouting mission for information about the End Magnus. Mira is difficult to access because it fluctuates in and out of another dimension. The assassin explains that searching Mira may be also complicated because Sagi and Milly – two of the people responsible for destroying the floating Imperial fortress of Terazed – are there. The assassin, however, proposes an idea: to unleash a disease perfected by Empire scientists under a previous emperor, Olgan. The plague will kill off Sagi and Milly, and a large swath of the Mira population. Once the plague has run its course, the Empire can then infiltrate Mira’s capital, search for the stone, and kill Sagi and Milly without implicating the currently weak Alfard Empire. Emperor Geldoblame, who in addition to his desire for the End Magnus has his own reasons for wanting Sagi dead, agrees.

Part 1: The Plague

Chapter 1 – Mira: In the capital of Balancoire, the city is celebrating the eighth birthday of Melodia, the daughter of Sagi and Milly and the surrogate granddaughter of Mira’s leader, Duke Calbren. (On a hill off in the distance, an older man watches while standing with an adolescent of his own – a blue-haired boy named Kalas, the future protagonist of Eternal Wings.) During the celebration, Sagi’s god-piece, Marno, feels something strange creeping into Sagi’s body, weakening it. Sagi, following Marno’s guidance, follows the “trail” of the strange, invisible cloud, eventually spotting and giving pursuit to a mysterious assassin. After a long chase, Sagi, joined by Milly, confront and fight the assassin. The assassin is defeated, but commits suicide by jumping off a dock before Sagi can question him.

Chapter 2 – Mira: By now Sagi, Milly, and large numbers in Balancoire have fallen ill over the mysterious plague. Calbren, alerted to the Imperial source of the plague, is reinforcing the borders against future Alfard intruders, although he decides to keep the source of the plague secret for now. Sagi’s health is failing, even as his god-piece, Marno, is trying to understand the disease ravaging his companion’s body. Eventually Marno learns enough of the disease that he is able to communicate to Sagi information about the disease that doctors might use to fashion a cure.

Chapter 3 – Mira: As Mira’s doctors rush to create the cure, Sagi receives a message from his mother Gena that his home continent of Hasseleh has begun to experience violent earthquakes, and that the island itself seems to be slowly descending from the sky. Sagi, worried about his mother and the others on the island, insists on going to Hasseleh. The doctors warn him that the cure is not yet finished; if Sagi does not return as soon as the cure is ready it may be too late for it to work.

Sagi, however, is resolute that he must help his mother. Milly insists on joining him. Melodia, their daughter, is young but also very sick; Sagi and Milly leave her in Duke Calbren’s care. Milly promises they will return, but if they do not, that Calbren should tell her daughter that they died in the plague, so that she will not feel abandoned. Before they leave, doctors give Milly and Sagi masks that will help keep them from spreading the disease to others they come in contact with. Milly also brings along a pack containing the head of Guillo, their old puppet companion.

Chapter 4 – Anuenue: Slipping out of Mira, Sagi and Milly take to the sky in their old ship, the Sfida. Sagi worries about how he is going to help save an entire island from falling, and wonders who could help. Sagi’s god-piece, Marno, suggests that perhaps Lolo, the brilliant engineer from Anuenue, might be able to help. Milly, who in the past did not like Lolo, reluctantly agrees. They travel to Anuenue and find Lolo. After explaining the situation, Lolo readily agrees to travel with them. Lolo brings along fell-branches from her island’s magical Celestial Tree in hopes it may be useful.

Chapter 5 – Hasseleh: They arrive at Sagi’s home island. The island is shaking and dropping, faster now. Lolo determines that the island is falling because of power leaking out from when the Empire sheared off part of the island during an attack over a decade before. Lolo says that she is not sure she can save the island but will try. As she heads off to work Sagi and Milly travel to the town of Sheratan where Sagi’s mother, Gena, resides. Part of the town has collapsed from the earthquakes, although they are able to pull survivors. Gena and her orphan children are unharmed. Suddenly the island begins to plunge rapidly downward, straight into the toxic Taintclouds.

Chapter 6 – Mira: Back in Balancoire, Duke Calbren administers the plague antidote to Melodia, but for some reason she does not recover. Desperate, Calbren decides to try an ancient power that only a few people know of. He leads her to Detourne, the Mystical Garden … and the resting place of Mira’s End Magnus.

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